Category: Research

In 2011, I was a Staff Nurse in critical care in Glasgow, and a Lecturer Practitioner at the University of Glasgow. I first heard about the Travelling Fellowships through a list of openings advertised by the university. I felt that this could be a fantastic opportunity for me so I decided to apply. I was elated when I found out my application had been successful. I discovered after the interview that about 1,000 people had applied, so I definitely didn’t expect to be chosen!

For my Fellowship, I went to the USA for four weeks. The broad aims of my project were to look at how to improve outcomes for patients recovering from a period of critical illness. I visited several Intensive Care Units (ICUs), exploring the use of various techniques to improve short and long-term outcomes for patients.

The ICS and FICM Joint Standards Committee have started the initial planning work on GPICS V2. To this end, we would be grateful if you could complete the very short survey below with your feedback on GPICS V1 and suggestions for GPICS V2. The survey will close on Friday 30th June at 5pm.

The Non Medical Workforce Survey was undertaken in the autumn of 2015 following a request from the Clinical Reference Group for Adult Critical Care. It was the first time that a national survey has been undertaken to gather data from non- medical staff working within the speciality of critical care.Continue reading “National Non-Medical Critical Care Workforce Survey”→

The SNAPs are short, sharp, point prevalence studies conducted by the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia Health Services Research Centre of perioperative practice in the UK. SNAP-1 was a study into postoperative patient reported outcome measures, and was recently published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. SNAP-2 will involve Continue reading “The 2nd Sprint National Anaesthesia Project”→

It is disheartening for all concerned when an arterial line stops working. The patient’s monitoring is compromised, re-siting a line takes up both medical and nursing time and it always seems to happen in the patient who is either desperately ill, or has such a poor arterial tree that the wire won’t thread.

Neil Smith, the recipient of the 2014 Nurse and AHP Foundation Fellowship Award, speaks about his research on decision making in ICUs. He is currently working at Hull Royal Infirmary whilst pursuing a PhD at the University of Hull.

LEoPARDS results published. A trial published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that adding levosimendan to standard care did not reduce organ dysfunction or mortality in adult patients with septic shock.

LeoPARDS (The Levosimendan for the Prevention of Acute Organ Dysfunction in Sepsis) was designed to test whether levosimendan, when added to standard treatment, could reduce organ dysfunction in septic shock. It recruited patients from 34 ICUs in the UK.

New findings on patients’ memories after ICU stay. People remember all sorts of things. Helle Svenningsen, Researcher at the Center in Health Promotion and Rehabilitation at VIA University College in Denmark, remembers vividly the conversation that prompted her to embark on a PhD in delirium:

“It was 2004 when I worked as a critical care nurse. While trying to talk to a patient about his illness, he kept going off track. He talked about his experiences of delirium. I became aware of my own frustration and suddenly realised that perhaps there was a reason he kept returning to these memories, that perhaps I was not really asking the right questions”.

Picks from JICS. Judging by the comments I get from patients on my follow up rounds, delirium can be a terrifying experience. It can also lead to anxiety and guilt when orientation returns. Perception by delirious patients can include believing that the staff are ‘secret police’ with malign intent, or aliens who have invaded the critical care unit to snatch souls, which are frightening for the individuals concerned and present a challenge for staff to manage.